1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for spooling a non-print job.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an example of a method for allowing an information processing apparatus connected to a printing apparatus to perform printing using the printing apparatus, the following method is described.
In this method, when an information processing apparatus instructs a printing apparatus to perform printing, job management information is displayed in a print queue of the information processing apparatus, and the information processing apparatus transmits a job to the printing apparatus. Then, after completing the processing of the job, the printing apparatus transmits end-of-processing information to the information processing apparatus so that the display of the job management information in the print queue is changed to indicate a completed state.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-3778 discusses a technique in which when a print job is transmitted to a printing apparatus, the state of the printing apparatus is acquired, and completion of printing of the print job is recognized, the information of the print job is deleted from a print queue.
Moreover, a technique referred to as overlay printing is widely known in the printer industry. Overlay printing is a technique for printing template data and data to be combined in an overlaid manner. In general, the template data is stored either the information processing apparatus or the printing apparatus.
When overlay printing is performed with the template data stored in an information processing apparatus, the spooled template data is stored in the information processing apparatus as a form file. When a printing apparatus is instructed to print the data to be combined, the printing apparatus prints the data to be combined by overlaying with the stored form file.
In the present specification, a job such as a form file of which the print data is not transmitted to the printing apparatus will be referred to as a non-print job. Print data means data which is printed by the printing apparatus when the data is transmitted to the printing apparatus with or without converting the data.
When the information processing apparatus spools a non-print job, the management information of the spooled non-print job is displayed in a print queue. However, since the print data of the non-print job does not need to be transmitted to the printing apparatus, the non-print job including the print data is not transmitted to the printing apparatus. Thus, the printing apparatus does not receive the non-print job from the information processing apparatus, and does not transmit end-of-processing information for the non-print job to the information processing apparatus.
As a result, the information processing apparatus cannot receive the end-of-processing information for the non-print job, and the management information of the non-print job remains in a non-completed state in the print queue. Therefore, there are issues in that the non-print job is processed again, and a user needs to manually change the management information of the non-print job in the print queue to a completed state.